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Salesforce.com is getting even more social with a new advertising application that connects social ads with relationship management () tools and "social listening." The new app, called Social.com, lets advertisers power ad campaigns on Facebook and Twitter using real-time customer data in combination with social listening data.

Social.com is part of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which also includes a social listening application and a publishing application. Salesforce says the new tools help enterprises reach customers in new ways and maximize return on advertising dollars.

Where Social.com Fits In

We asked Gordon Evans, VP of Product Marketing at Salesforce.com, why a solution like Social.com is needed now. He explained that social advertising is creating a new opportunity to reach a huge number of consumers along with an unprecedented opportunity for targeting.

"With social media now being the No. 1 online consumer activity worldwide, brands not only have enormous global reach, but also the ability to target ads based on social profiles, likes, interests, activities and location via mobile devices," Evans said. However, he explained, there is still "a need to be able to do this efficiently and accurately, which can't be done if we isolate social ads. They need to be connected to marketers' CRM systems, which is where Social.com comes in."

A Mammoth Opportunity

Salesforce pegs social advertising as a huge opportunity for marketers. The spend is expected to more than double from $4.7 billion in 2012 to $11 billion in 2017, according to BIA Kelsey. What's more, Nielsen predicts 64 percent of advertisers expect to increase their spend on social advertising in 2013.

"With people spending more time on social networks than ever before, leading marketers are seeking to effectively leverage paid social campaigns," said Mary Wardley, program vice president of CRM Applications at IDC. "To successfully run social ad campaigns, marketers need scale, but they also need to make sure social advertising is connected to listening and engagement. Powerful applications like Salesforce's Social.com help provide this crucial scale and innovation."

Practically speaking, Social.com lets marketers build, test and launch social ad campaigns in a scalable way. The company said marketers can execute more effective social ad campaigns by testing all of the available targeting, creative and placement combinations, to drive highly localized and relevant ads. They can also leverage Facebook and Twitter data to identify the best content for advertising.

Social.com also provides a way to track and analyze metrics over time with live campaign monitoring and real-time feedback on social ad performance around particular goals. Marketers can also adjust ad spends automatically by predefining rules to make real-time optimization decisions across all ads and campaigns.

The Social Marketing Mix

"Social media has achieved a recognizable level of credibility in the marketing world, and if brands don't have it in their marketing mix, they are missing a huge touch point with potential customers," said Jonathan Nelson, CEO of Omnicom Digital. "Smart marketers are buying media in real-time and working with the latest tools to ensure they are delivering the right message, at the right time, to the right person, which is even more imperative in the connected, social world."

Social.com is generally available today, while Social.com real-time customer data and social listening is scheduled to be generally available by this summer, along with real-time listening. Pricing is based on a percentage of total social ad spend made via the application.